Series Special: A Fan fiction for Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice–Chapter III

The characters in this story are inspired by the novel’s beloved characters Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy.

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(The next day at the studio of Brown Paper Media)

It was a Saturday, and Kulay came to the studio at ten o’clock. She was supposed to meet Gelo and Maria there an hour before lunch but decided to come in early to avoid the weekend traffic and to prepare for her editorial next month. Every quarter of the year, each magazine would release an editorial to wrap up the events in the three fields that were featured in the last three months.

Kulay kept a journal where she jotted down notes for her editorial. She browsed through them. Her newer list included familiar names from yesterday’s Art Fair:

Daniel Dela Cruz’s Alice in Wonderland

Michael Cacnio’s Manananggal

Mel Sylvestre’s artwork

Nona Garcia’s Before the Sea maquette

The maquette, the word struck a chord. Kulay suddenly remembered the mysterious guy who snuck up on her on two separate occasions.

Two separate occasions, right! Kulay realized she had not yet seen the pictures taken from last January’s event. She immediately browsed through the shared files from a cloud storage device they all used.

She clicked on the folder Síning. She opened the January folder.

She kept browsing through the series of pictures, trying to recall why she only remembered to do this now. Each photo showed several people in the event, most of them looked familiar to her. But none of them looked like the guy who snuck up to her twice. Liz was not able to catch the guy in her lens. Or probably it was the guy himself who didn’t want to be caught.

Kulay let out a heavy sigh. She decided to focus instead in completing her list, letting go of the thoughts about the mysterious guy. As she browsed through the pictures, she stumbled upon an image—

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Right! How could I forget about this? she muttered to herself. She clicked on View Image, and the monitor showed her an image of a label from the Tagalized exhibit. She realized she planned to include this beautiful piece in her editorial and must find a way to know its creator.

She wrote down the name on a post-it and accidentally hit next. The next image showed Liz’s photo of the Pride and Prejudice and Its Peculiarities painting. She stared at it, hypnotised by its surreal yet majestic style. The colours used were mostly pastel, yet the entire painting seemed striking in all angles. Kulay wondered what could be the inspiration of its creator. Did he like the story as much as she did? Could he be a hopeless romantic inside? Could he be . . . —

Kulay shrugged at the thought even before she could finish it. She closed the tab for the cloud storage site, opened another tab for the search engine, and typed in the name she had in her post-it.

Keith Jacinto, there you go, she whispered as she hit Search.

The results provided her with articles, mostly press releases from several galleries. Upon scrolling down, she luckily stumbled upon a website after his own name: www.keithjacinto.com. She clicked on it, and was immediately greeted by the same Pride and Prejudice painting from the gallery last month. Browsing through the website only showed his artworks that reminded her of several artists because of the variety of styles he could present.

All the artworks were grouped according to the year they were created, with the most recent work shown first. Each label only showed the title, the original size, and the medium used. Each artwork fascinated her. One painting called Shutter Smile was a beautiful oil on canvas painting that showed a girl standing on a grey field, holding an SLR camera with a big smile on her lips. Only the girl has colours on her but her head obviously was the focus of the painting, emphasizing it with much more striking colours, so the eyes would be immediately drawn to her head. Her curiosity arose more as she saw his other artworks. How come they have never featured him before? Who is this Keith Jacinto?

Kulay hit the About page to see more information about Keith Jacinto.

She felt disappointed upon seeing so little information about him:

Keith Jacinto. A carver, painter, photographer, and sculptor from the Philippines.

But below the thrift information was a black and white photo of a young lad’s right profile. His facial features were almost covered by his long, wavy hair, except for the right eye which was focused on something in front of him.

She stared at that photo and couldn’t make out anything from it. It was as if Keith Jacinto didn’t really want his face plastered on his own website.

Maybe not on his website, Kulay whispered. She realized she hadn’t search for his name under Images. And when she did, she was disappointed to find nothing. Well, there were several men and boys tagged under the name Keith Jacinto, but none of them resembled the young lad in the Keith Jacinto website nor the Keith Jacinto Kulay pictured in her head: a grungy-looking guy with thick-rimmed glasses and long, messed up hair.